Neruda, Pablo

orig. Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

born July 12, 1904, Parral, Chile

died Sept. 23, 1973, Santiago

Chilean poet and diplomat.

He began writing poetry at age 10, and at 20 he published his most widely read work, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), inspired by an unhappy love affair. In 1927 he was named an honorary consul, and he later represented Chile in several Asian and Latin American countries; late in life he was ambassador to France. While in Asia he began Residence on Earth (1933, 1935, 1947), a verse cycle remarkable for its examination of social decay and personal isolation. In 1945 he was elected senator and joined the Communist Party; he later spent years in exile when the government turned toward the right. Canto General (1950), his great epic poem about the American continents, was deeply influenced by Walt Whitman and is the culminating expression of his political beliefs. Elemental Odes (1954) celebrates common, everyday objects. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Pablo Neruda.

Camera Press

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▪ Chilean poet

Introduction

original name  Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto 

born July 12, 1904, Parral, Chile

died September 23, 1973, Santiago

 Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He was perhaps the most important Latin American (Latin American literature) poet of the 20th century.

Early life and love poetry

      Neruda was the son of José del Carmen Reyes, a railway worker, and Rosa Basoalto. His mother died within a month of Neruda's birth, and two years later the family moved to Temuco, a small town farther south in Chile, where his father remarried. Neruda was a precocious boy who began to write poetry at age 10. His father tried to discourage him from writing and never cared for his poems, which was probably why the young poet began to publish under the pseudonym Pablo Neruda, which he was legally to adopt in 1946. He entered the Temuco Boys' School in 1910 and finished his secondary schooling there in 1920. Tall, shy, and lonely, Neruda read voraciously and was encouraged by the principal of the Temuco Girls' School, Gabriela Mistral (Mistral, Gabriela), a gifted poet who would herself later become a Nobel laureate.

      Neruda first published his poems in the local newspapers and later in magazines published in the Chilean capital, Santiago. In 1921 he moved to Santiago to continue his studies and become a French teacher. There he experienced loneliness and hunger and took up a bohemian lifestyle. His first book of poems, Crepusculario, was published in 1923. The poems, subtle and elegant, were in the tradition of Symbolist poetry, or rather its Hispanic version, Modernismo. His second book, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924; Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), was inspired by an unhappy love affair. It became an instant success and is still one of Neruda's most popular books. The verse in Twenty Love Poems is vigorous, poignant, and direct, yet subtle and very original in its imagery and metaphors. The poems express young, passionate, unhappy love perhaps better than any book of poetry in the long Romantic tradition.

The experimental poet as diplomat

      At age 20, with two books published, Neruda had already become one of the best-known Chilean poets. He abandoned his French studies and began to devote himself entirely to poetry. Three more books appeared in quick succession: Tentativa del hombre infinito (1926; “Attempt of the Infinite Man”); Anillos (1926; “Rings”), in collaboration with Tomás Lago; and El hondero entusiasta (1933; “The Enthusiastic Slingshooter”). Yet his poetry was not a steady source of income, so he translated hastily from several languages and published magazine and newspaper articles. Neruda's future looked uncertain without a steady job, so he managed to get himself appointed honorary consul to Rangoon in Burma (now Yangôn, Myanmar). For the next five years he represented his country in Asia. He continued to live in abject poverty, however, since as honorary consul he received no salary, and he was tormented by loneliness.

      From Rangoon Neruda moved to Colombo in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He increasingly came to identify with the South Asian masses, who were heirs to ancient cultures but were downtrodden by poverty, colonial rule, and political oppression. It was during these years in Asia that he wrote Residencia en la tierra, 1925–1931 (1933; Residence on Earth). In this book Neruda moves beyond the lucid, conventional lyricism of Twenty Love Poems, abandoning normal syntax, rhyme, and stanzaic organization to create a highly personalized poetic technique. His personal and collective anguish gives rise to nightmarish visions of disintegration, chaos, decay, and death that he recorded in a cryptic, difficult style inspired by Surrealism. These puzzling and mysterious poems both attract and repel the reader with the powerful and awe-inspiring vision they present of a modern descent into hell.

      In 1930 Neruda was named consul in Batavia (modern Jakarta), which was then the capital of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). There he fell in love with a Dutch woman, Maria Antonieta Hagenaar, and married her. In 1932 Neruda returned to Chile, but he still could not earn a living from his poetry. In 1933 he was appointed Chilean consul in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There he met the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (García Lorca, Federico), who at that time was traveling in Argentina and who was to become a close friend and an enthusiastic defender of Neruda's poetry.

Communism and poetry

      In 1934 Neruda took up an appointment as consul in Barcelona, Spain, and soon he was transferred to the consulate in Madrid. His success there was instantaneous after García Lorca introduced him. Neruda's new friends, especially Rafael Alberti (Alberti, Rafael) and Miguel Hernández (Hernández, Miguel), were involved in radical politics and the Communist Party. Neruda shared their political beliefs and moved ever closer to communism. In the meantime, his marriage was foundering. He and his wife separated in 1936, and Neruda met a young Argentine woman, Delia del Carril, who would be his second wife until their divorce in the early 1950s.

      A second, enlarged edition of the Residencia poems entitled Residencia en la tierra, 1925–35 was published in two volumes in 1935. In this edition, Neruda begins to move away from the highly personal, often hermetic poetry of the first Residencia volume, adopting a more extroverted outlook and a clearer, more accessible style in order to better communicate his new social concerns to the reader. This line of poetic development was interrupted suddenly by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, however. While García Lorca was executed by the Nationalists and Alberti and Hernández fought at the front, Neruda traveled in and out of Spain to gather money and mobilize support for the Republicans. He wrote España en el corazón (1937; Spain in My Heart) to express his feelings of solidarity with them. The book was printed by Republican troops working with improvised presses near the front lines.

      In 1937 Neruda returned to Chile and entered his country's political life, giving lectures and poetry readings while also defending Republican Spain and Chile's new centre-left government. In 1939 he was appointed special consul in Paris, where he supervised the migration to Chile of many defeated Spanish Republicans who had escaped to France. In 1940 he took up a post as Chile's consul general in Mexico. He also began work on a long poem, Canto general (1950; “General Song,” Eng. trans. Canto general), resonant with historical and epic overtones, that would become one of his key works. In 1943, during a trip to Peru, Neruda climbed to the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu. The strong emotions aroused by the sight of this spectacular ruin inspired one of his finest poems, Alturas de Macchu Picchu (1943; Heights of Macchu Picchu). This powerful celebration of pre-Columbian civilization would become the centrepiece of Canto general.

      In the meantime, Neruda suffered a stunning reversal in his native country. He had returned to Chile in 1943, was elected a senator in 1945, and also joined the Communist Party. He campaigned for the leftist candidate Gabriel González Videla in the elections of 1946, only to see President Videla turn to the right two years later. Feeling betrayed, Neruda published an open letter critical of Videla; as a consequence, he was expelled from the Senate and went into hiding to avoid arrest. In February 1948 he left Chile, crossing the Andes Mountains on horseback by night with the manuscript of Canto general in his saddlebag.

      In exile Neruda visited the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and Mexico. In Mexico he again met Matilde Urrutia, a Chilean woman whom he had first encountered in 1946. Their marriage would last until the end of his life, and she would inspire some of the most passionate Spanish love poems of the 20th century. The third volume of Neruda's Residencia cycle, Tercera residencia, 1935–45 (1947; “Third Residence”), completed his rejection of egocentric angst and his open espousal of left-wing ideological concerns. His communist political beliefs receive their culminating expression in Canto general. This epic poem celebrates Latin America—its flora, its fauna, and its history, particularly the wars of liberation from Spanish rule and the continuing struggle of its peoples to obtain freedom and social justice. It also, however, celebrates Joseph Stalin, the bloody Soviet dictator in power at the time.

Later years

      In 1952 the political situation in Chile once again became favourable, and Neruda was able to return home. By that time his works had been translated into many languages. Rich and famous, he built a house on Isla Negra, facing the Pacific Ocean, and also maintained houses in Santiago and Valparaíso. While traveling in Europe, Cuba, and China, Neruda embarked upon a period of incessant writing and feverish creation. One of his major works, Odas elementales (Elemental Odes), was published in 1954. Its verse was written in a new poetic style—simple, direct, precise, and humorous—and it contained descriptions of everyday objects, situations, and beings (e.g., “Ode to the Onion” and “Ode to the Cat”). Many of the poems in Odas elementales have been widely anthologized. Neruda's poetic output during these years was stimulated by his international fame and personal happiness; 20 books of his appeared between 1958 and his death in 1973, and 8 more were published posthumously. In his memoirs, Confieso que he vivido (1974; Memoirs), Neruda summed up his life through reminiscences, comments, and anecdotes.

      In 1969 Neruda campaigned for the leftist candidate Salvador Allende (Allende, Salvador), who appointed him ambassador to France after being elected president of Chile. While already ill with cancer in France, Neruda in 1971 learned that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. After traveling to Stockholm to receive his prize, he returned to Chile bedridden and terminally ill and survived by only a few days his friend Allende, who died in a right-wing military coup.

Assessment

      Neruda's body of poetry is so rich and varied that it defies classification or easy summary. It developed along four main directions, however. His love poetry, such as the youthful Twenty Love Poems and the mature Los versos del Capitán (1952; The Captain's Verses), is tender, melancholy, sensuous, and passionate. In “material” poetry, such as Residencia en la tierra, loneliness and depression immerse the author in a subterranean world of dark, demonic forces. His epic poetry is best represented by Canto general, which is a Whitmanesque attempt at reinterpreting the past and present of Latin America and the struggle of its oppressed and downtrodden masses toward freedom. And finally there is Neruda's poetry of common, everyday objects, animals, and plants, as in Odas elementales.

      These four trends correspond to four aspects of Neruda's personality: his passionate love life; the nightmares and depression he experienced while serving as a consul in Asia; his commitment to a political cause; and his ever-present attention to details of daily life, his love of things made or grown by human hands. Many of his other books, such as Libro de las preguntas (1974; The Book of Questions), reflect philosophical and whimsical questions about the present and future of humanity. Neruda was one of the most original and prolific poets to write in Spanish in the 20th century, but despite the variety of his output as a whole, each of his books has unity of style and purpose.

      Neruda's work is collected in Obras completas (1973; 4th ed. expanded, 3 vol.). Most of his work is available in various English translations. Four essential works are Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, trans. by W.S. Merwin (Merwin, W.S.) (1969, reissued 1993); Residence on Earth, and Other Poems, trans. by Angel Flores (1946, reprinted 1976); Canto general, trans. by Jack Schmitt (1991); and Elementary Odes of Pablo Neruda, trans. by Carlos Lozano (1961).

Manuel E. Duran Roberto González Echevarría

Additional Reading

Volodia Teitelboim, Neruda (1991; originally published in Spanish, 1984), is a biography written by a friend. Among the most interesting Spanish-language critical studies of Neruda's life and works are Amado Alonso, Poesía y estilo de Pablo Neruda (1940, reissued 1997); Margarita Aguirre, Las vidas de Pablo Neruda (1967, reissued 1973); and Emir Rodríguez Monegal, El viajero inmovil (1966), the best combination of biography and criticism. Later critical studies in English include Frank Riess, The Word and the Stone: Language and Imagery in Neruda's Canto General (1972); Salvatore Bizzarro, Pablo Neruda: All Poets the Poet (1979); René de Costa, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (1979); John Felstiner, Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu (1980); Manuel Durán and Margery Safir, Earth Tones: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (1981, reissued 1986); Enrico Mario Santí, Pablo Neruda: The Poetics of Prophecy (1982); Marjorie Agosin, Pablo Neruda, trans. from Spanish (1986); and Christopher Perriam, The Late Poetry of Pablo Neruda (1989).Manuel E. Duran Roberto González Echevarría

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